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How Much Sex Do Other People Have?

The numbers here are for men and women between 18 and 29, and the “reality” number is self-reported, so take it with a grain of salt. Nonetheless, you can see that we tend to wildly overestimate how much sex other people are having compared to ourselves.

To look at the statistics about marriage and sex, you wouldn’t even know that there was an issue to begin with. “Studies have found that married people have more sex than single people, and they also have more varied sex,” says sexual health expert and best-selling author Dr. Laura Berman, who hosts “In The Bedroom with Dr. Laura Berman” on OWN. ”Oral sex is also more common among married people.”

One of the most comprehensive studies on the subject, which was released in 2010 by the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University, confirmed this, compiling statistics on sexual attitudes and habits of 5,865 people between ages 14 and 94. An average of 61 percent of singles reported that they hadn’t had sex within the past year, compared with 18 percent of married people. Looking specifically at those between the ages of 25 and 59, 25 percent of married people reported that they were still having sex two to three times per week versus less than five percent of singles.

Back in the early 1990s, the average American had sex about 60 to 62 times per year, but that number dropped to less than 53 times per year by 2014. Among married couples specifically, the drop was even more dramatic — from about 73 times per year in 1990 to 55 in 2014. This actually brings the sex lives married couples below people who’ve never been married, who have sex about 59 times per year as of 2014.

But forget about everyone else… what about you and your spouse? Sexy Corte and I advocate making a habit of daily sex — yes, every day! Sometimes you miss, but those misses should be the exception, not the rule. Tell us how you and your spouse fare in the comments.

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10 comments

We have aimed for every day for the past year & I positively wish we had set that goal many years ago. My husband’s job is very stressful which equals both a positive, more frequent need of a “stress relief” and the opposite, negative effect of all his testosterone & energy being drained by the job. We’ve learned to get ahead of the stress by connecting in the mornings. Reality is 4-5x in a good week and 3 on a week with a lot of overtime.
Honestly, it’s so much more than when we were younger and had young children.

Thanks for sharing your experiences. We agree: mornings can be great if you can make it happen before the kids are up!

There’s a lot of value in setting a target. You won’t hit it all the time, but by creating the expectation that you’ll be having sex every day you make the days you miss the exception rather than the rule.

Folks within our community vary greatly – some once or twice a year to some several times a week. It really is a wide variance. The reasons for the lack of sex in the struggling marriages vary from things like body image to no communication on the topic to simple lack of interests and asexuality.